Hit-and-Run Motorcycle Crash in Aurora: Finding the Uninsured Motorist Coverage Our Client Was Owed

Result Snapshot

The short version

A driver tried to squeeze past our client’s motorcycle, swung into oncoming traffic, then cut back so fast he clipped the bike. Our client went down at a high rate of speed. And the driver kept going. No plate. No name. No insurance company to call. Just a rider on the pavement at Tower Road and 40th Avenue in Aurora, and a stack of medical bills already on the way.

When the driver who hurts you runs, the law has an answer, and it has a name: uninsured motorist coverage. It is the coverage you pay for so a stranger’s hit-and-run does not run off with your recovery too. Our client had it. So what was the problem? His own insurance company opened at $22,000, a number that would not have covered his medical bills, never mind the months of healing in front of him.

Rampart Injury Lawyers took the case. By the time we finished, that $22,000 had become the full $100,000 limit on the first policy plus a second policy we tracked down, for a combined $200,000. He had the money within a few months.

What happened

Our client is a longtime motorcycle rider, the kind who knows that two wheels forgive nothing. He was riding through the intersection of Tower Road and 40th Avenue in Aurora, in Adams County, when another driver decided he did not want to wait. The driver pulled out to pass, crossed into the oncoming lane, then jerked back toward our client’s lane to avoid a head-on.

He came back too soon and too hard. The car caught the motorcycle, and our client hit the ground.

There is no roll cage on a motorcycle. No airbag. No steel between a body and the road. When a rider goes down at speed, the pavement does what pavement does. And the driver who caused it never stopped. He left the scene and was never identified.

Injuries and medical impact

The crash left our client with multiple rib fractures and fractures of the transverse processes at L3 and L4, the bony wings that project from the sides of the lower spine. He also suffered a concussion, deep contusions, road abrasions, and lingering knee pain. None of that heals over a weekend. Broken ribs turn every breath and every cough into a reminder. A concussion can scramble sleep, focus, and mood for weeks. The bills started arriving before the bruises faded, and the first offer on the table would not have touched them.

The legal and insurance challenges

A hit-and-run claim runs on the injured person’s own UM coverage, because there is no at-fault driver to sue and no liability policy to chase. Colorado law allows exactly that. A driver who flees and cannot be located is treated as uninsured for the purpose of a UM claim. (C.R.S. section 10-4-609.)

That part is straightforward. The hard part is what insurers sometimes do next. Here, our client’s own carrier valued the whole thing at $22,000. That figure did not cover his medical bills. It treated a serious, multi-fracture motorcycle wreck like a parking-lot tap.

Two questions drove the fight. First, what was this claim actually worth against the available limits? Second, and this is where a lot of injured people get shortchanged: was $100,000 the only coverage in play, or was there more money sitting in policies nobody had pointed to yet?

How Rampart built the case

We started where the carrier hoped we would not look: inside the policy language and the household’s full coverage picture. Adjusters work from the one policy in front of them. We do not stop there. Our attorneys and paralegals run every claim through a coverage check built to surface protection the first offer quietly leaves out.

We documented the crash and the injuries, tied the medical records to the mechanics of the fall, and built a demand the carrier could not brush aside with $22,000. We pushed them to handle the UM claim the way the policy required. They paid the $100,000 limit.

Then came the move that doubled the recovery. We found a second policy that also afforded UM coverage to our client. Colorado does not let insurers quietly keep coverage by stacking the deck against the people who paid for it. We pursued the limits under that policy too. Combined, the two policies delivered $200,000.

And we moved fast. This resolved before any lawsuit was filed, and our client had the funds in hand within a few months of our involvement.

The result

A $22,000 opening offer became $200,000 in combined policy limits, paid pre-suit, within months. What drove it: reading the coverage rather than trusting the adjuster’s summary of it, proving the injuries with the records, and refusing to accept that one policy was the only policy. Every case turns on its own facts, and no outcome here predicts another. The lesson, though, holds: the first number an insurer says out loud is rarely the last number available.

Colorado injury law takeaway

If a hit-and-run driver hurt you in Colorado and was never identified, your own uninsured motorist coverage is usually the road to recovery. (C.R.S. section 10-4-609.) Two features of that statute matter. First, your UM/UIM coverage cannot be cut by a setoff from your other coverage, such as health insurance or medical-payments coverage. Second, a driver who flees and cannot be served is deemed uninsured, which is exactly what opens the UM door after a hit-and-run.

There is a second, less obvious point that changed this client’s outcome. Coverage can sometimes be combined. Colorado limits an insurer’s ability to block the stacking of UM/UIM limits to policies issued to the insured, not to other policies that merely cover the insured. The Colorado Court of Appeals applied that distinction in Arith v. Zurich American Insurance Co., 2018 COA 9, allowing two policies’ limits to be combined. The Colorado Supreme Court had framed the principle even more plainly years earlier: UM/UIM benefits follow the person, not the vehicle. (DeHerrera v. Sentry Insurance Co., 30 P.3d 167 (Colo. 2001).)

And if your own insurer drags its feet or lowballs a claim it owes, Colorado hands policyholders real teeth. Under C.R.S. sections 10-3-1115 and 10-3-1116, an insurer that unreasonably delays or denies benefits owed can be on the hook for two times the covered benefit, plus your attorney fees and costs.

Frequently Asked Questions

Talk to a Colorado injury lawyer

Were you hurt by a hit-and-run driver in Aurora, in Adams County, or anywhere across the Denver metro and the I-25 corridor? Did your own insurance company hand you a number that does not come close to your bills? Call Rampart Injury Lawyers at (303) 766-8766 for a free consultation from our office in Castle Rock. We handle injury cases on a contingency fee basis, which means you owe no attorney fee unless we recover for you, although a client may be responsible for costs and expenses.

Disclaimers

Rampart Injury Lawyers is a trade name of Travis Legal Offices, LLC. Todd A. Travis is the attorney responsible for the content of this page. Office: 333 Perry Street, Suite 203, Castle Rock, CO 80104.

Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome. Every case is different and depends on its own facts. (Colo. RPC 7.1, cmt. [3].)

We handle injury cases on a contingency fee basis. You pay no attorney fee unless we obtain a recovery for you. A client may still be responsible for costs and expenses. (Colo. RPC 7.1, cmt. [3A].)

This page is attorney advertising and is provided for general information only. It is not legal advice, and contacting Rampart Injury Lawyers does not create an attorney-client relationship. (Colo. RPC 1.18.)